The UK-based Gridserve announced several new partnerships with retail, service and technology companies to deliver improve the customer experience at the UK’s first Electric Forecourt due to open near Essex in November.
Retail partners in the new agreements include WHSmith, Costa Coffee, the Post Office, Booths, and Gourmade, alongside charging infrastructure partners ABB, Tesla, and customer support from the AA.
With their support, Gridserve intends to “help deliver its vision of making electric vehicle charging as simple and stress-free as using petrol stations, but with a radically improved customer experience, designed for the modern age.”
According to Toddington Harper, Founder and CEO of Gridserve, this is only the first of many such charging centres to open in the UK in the near future: “Our UK-wide network of over 100 customer-focused Electric Forecourts will eliminate range and charging anxiety by making it easier and cheaper to charge an electric vehicle than to fuel a petrol or diesel alternative.”
The initiative is still somewhat new, as Gridserve only begun construction on their first site in March, and only afterwards secured the funding and began their road towards the establishment of the charging service in May.
The planning application for the Electric Forecourt was submitted last summer with barely over a year needed to pave the way for the first 30 charging stations.
An education centre will also be included in the Electric Forecourts, which aims to be “providing people with the confidence, knowledge and support to transition to an all-electric future”. The 350 kW fast chargers themselves come from Tesla & ABB, whose Head of Global E-Mobility Infrastructure Solutions, Frank Muehlon, said:
“This Electric Forecourt is a step-change for e-mobility and our cutting-edge charging infrastructure will deliver unrivalled charging speeds, enabling people to charge any type of electric vehicle with ease and as fast as the vehicle will allow.”
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